At 62, Chanmaly had just retired and had plans full of plans.
“Many projects”, insists Me Houria Zanovello, lawyer for the family of the sixty-year-old, fatally struck by a motorist on July 5, 2022, in Agnetz.
This Tuesday, the 34-year-old driver was sentenced to 30 months in prison, including 8 in the form of house arrest, by the Beauvais court.
Alcoholic at the time of the facts, she will also have to respect an obligation of care, psychological and addictological.
On this beautiful summer evening, Chanmaly was out for a walk with her husband in the streets of the town.
But around 8:30 p.m., while they were walking on the side of a small road which adjoins the tennis courts, a motorist hit the sixty-year-old.
She will die a few minutes after the shock, despite a cardiac massage provided by a plainclothes policeman who witnessed the scene.
“I had the sun in my eyes, I did not see her, sobs the driver at the bar of the court.
I just heard boom.
That's all I remember.
»
“She left because you were negligent”
On the driving side, the expertise carried out by the gendarmes proves that the 30-year-old respected the speed limits.
But the problem is elsewhere: that evening, she had drunk three beers before hitting the road, breaking "6 or 7 months" of abstinence.
“A consumption incompatible with its treatment”, recalls the public prosecutor, Caroline Tharot, in reference to the drugs prescribed in the context of alcohol withdrawal.
“I had not eaten and I was tired, concedes this mother of two children.
I don't know why I did this, I'm ashamed.
»
"It's difficult but today you have to assume: she left because you were negligent", gets carried away Me Zanovello.
Behind the lawyer, about fifteen members of Chanmaly's family are present, some of them with portraits of the victim.
Born in Phnom Penh in Cambodia, the latter experienced the Khmer Rouge regime and forced labor before finding exile in France.
“She had been retired for barely four months,” breathes Me Zanovello.
Chanmaly will not have had time to take advantage of it.
